Shane MacGowan: London Irish Punk Life and Music

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ONE

The Crack Of Hurling Sticks

Shane Patrick Lysaght MacGowan was born on Wednesday, December 25, 1957 in Tunbridge Wells, Kent. Some fifty miles away in Buckingham Palace, London, Queen Elizabeth II was making her first Christmas broadcast on television. Understandably, no mention of Shane’s arrival was made in her speech. Yet, had she known of his future contribution to the cause of Anglo/Irish relations, the oversight might well have been corrected.

Shane’s parents, Maurice and Therese, were actually visiting relatives in England at the time of his birth. Married only a year or so before, the couple met in Dublin, Eire in the early Fifties. Following a recent win in the beauty contest Colleen of the year, Therese moved to Ireland’s capital city from her childhood home of Tipperary to pursue a temporary career in modelling, though she also harboured secret ambitions to become an actress. A native Dubliner, from a middle-class background, Maurice MacGowan was by his own admission ‘a local roustabout’ when he met his future wife. However, like Therese, he was of an artistic nature and often dreamed of writing a novel. My mother was a prizewinning folk-singer in her youth, Shane later remembered, and my father wanted to be an author.

Following their son’s birth, the couple returned to Eire to begin a new life. Electing to bring Shane up in the country rather than the city, they moved into Therese’s homestead in the parish of Borrisokaine, near Nenagh in north-west Tipperary. Lying in the province of Munster, and bordered by Clare, Limerick and Offaly (amongst others), Tipperary was arguably at the heart of rural Ireland. A small county, its people gleaned their living mainly through agriculture, setting land aside for the grazing of cattle and sheep. Of course there were towns, with Roscrea, Clonmel, Cashel, Carrick-on-Suir and Thurles providing work for non-farm owners. Yet, in the main, Tipperary remained a thoroughly green and largely unspoilt part of Eire.

Beyond its association with ‘the land’, the county was justly famous for the prowess of its hurling team – an extremely fast field sport played with carved sticks and a tightly wound ball. Since the introduction of national championships in the 1890s, Tipperary had won in excess of twenty ‘All-Irelands’, placing them behind only Cork and Kilkenny in terms of tide victories. Horse racing, too, played a fundamental part in the county’s social life, with the track at Limerick Junction visited by thousands of spectators each year. For those drawn to the water, Lough Derg provided fine opportunities for sailing and fishing, with the Lough itself taking its source from Ireland’s largest river, the Shannon. In short then, Shane MacGowan was returning to a huge playground, where the most threatening noise to be heard was the crack of hurling sticks and the occasional bark of a collie dog.

Like the county in which he grew up, Shane’s childhood home was quintessentially Irish, a pleasing mixture of sturdy, practical furnishings and religious iconography. Overlooking family activity in the living room was a framed picture of the then current Pope, John the XXIII, and a plaster statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (an image of Christ with arms outstretched). Beside the dressing table stood a red couch. It was here that MacGowan slept. There was about 12 people living in the house at one time or another, sleeping three to a bed, he later confirmed. I used to sleep on the couch, because it was more comfortable. When I was a kid, there was no running water. We had an electric fire and a fire to cook with … but no cooker as such. Basic and beautiful. It was the end of an era that I just happened to catch. I’m glad I did.

Shane wasn’t exaggerating about the lack of creature comforts in rural Ireland at the beginning of the Sixties. Unlike Eire’s capital, Dublin, there was no network of pipes laid to provide running water for the populace. Instead, country dwellings often relied on natural wells and pumps, with water being stored in tanks and barrels outside the house rather than within it. While the MacGowan family were lucky enough to receive electricity from a local grid, many farms in nearby counties such as Clare and Limerick were without even that luxury – the only sources of heat and light provided by firewood and locally grown turf. It was not until the end of the decade that full modernisation of these areas took place.

However, there were always parties to attend. More often than not, they were held by Shane’s parents. There was always music. Therese MacGowan told the BBC. Every weekend, sometimes even in the middle of the week, we’d have music … dancing on the old kitchen floor. And so Shane absorbed all that wonderful traditional culture at a formative age. Often at these family gatherings (or ‘sessions’), the young MacGowan was placed upon the kitchen table, and asked to sing. Suffice it to say, he needed little encouragement: I did my first gig when I was three, he recalled. I used to like Christmas a lot too, when I was a kid, but as I got older, it lost its appeal. Everyone gradually tended to forget it was my birthday because they were too busy getting drunk together. But so what … you can’t complain about a piss-up, can you?

It would appear, then, that Shane MacGowan’s earliest childhood memories were entirely bereft of conflict. A small boy growing up in a close-knit community, his days were rich in the enchantment of the time and place, filled with doting relatives, friendly local musicians and curious looking drinks placed just beyond his grasp. Still too young to fully understand the all-pervading influence of the church on Eire’s social attitudes and behaviour, let alone the small-mindedness and black cynicism that often accompanied life in the country, Shane’s Ireland was an idealised one – basic, beautiful and full of love. All I ever had were happy times, he later said.

Unfortunately, MacGowan was wrenched from his surroundings at the age of six, another statistic in one of Ireland’s most enduring problems: emigration. Since The Great Famine of 1845–49 (when potato crops failed for four years in succession), Eire had seen a steady migration of its young to foreign climes. In the famine years, this exodus was linked entirely to survival, with over a quarter of the country’s population (approximately one million people) leaving to seek food and work in the USA and England. To give some indication of the numbers involved, in 1847 alone, over 300,000 Irish citizens arrived in Liverpool, with 116,000 of these described as half-naked and starving. For those sailing to find a new life, conditions were little short of appalling. Crippled by illnesses such as typhoid and dysentery, the passengers were, in the words of one contemporary government official: generally crowded or huddled together in the most disgraceful manner imaginable. They were perfectly helpless, covered in filth and dirt and completely drenched by the sea wash. As a consequence, many thousands died on route to their destination, giving birth to the long-held expression Coffin ship.

Though Ireland’s food-chain eventually re-established itself, a precedent for escape had been set in motion. From 1850 to 1870, another one million people would leave the country behind in favour of other English-speaking nations, the US, Canada, Australia and the UK. In truth, there was little to keep them from going. Rocked by continuing economic problems, unemployment, disputes over land and a supreme dissatisfaction with English rule, Eire was a pot all but ready to boil over, its populace either doomed to stay and suffer, or leave while they could. When dissatisfaction erupted into open violence in the fight for Irish independence in 1916, thousands more set sail, this time avoiding bullets rather than the effects of hunger. Even the introduction of the Free State in 1922 and the beginnings of home rule could not stem the tide, with approximately 100,000 more citizens applying for emigrant status in the years between 1930 to 1955.

Thus, when the MacGowans made the decision to move from north-west Tipperary to Brighton, England, they were merely following an established tradition of cultural exodus – seeking, in effect, a prosperity and future that couldn’t be found at home. For Shane, who joined his parents later, the experience was jarring. I didn’t want to leave, he said. "No, I hated leaving. We lived in Brighton first … a terrible place, always cold and windy … always grey. To compound the greyness of the skies, MacGowan was also confronted with complete culture shock. There were black people and big city streets. I’d spent my childhood in a remote part of Ireland. There were lots of hills, small farms and the River Shannon. Lots of traditional musicians. Hurling. Horse racing. I hated it, hated coming to England …"

To support his family, Maurice MacGowan had already secured employment with clothing giants C&A, taking on an administrative role in the company’s offices. (My dad) was a pen-pusher, a clerical worker, Shane later confirmed. In due course, his mother also found a job working as a typist in a convent. With his parents now assimilated into the everyday ways of English life, it was time for MacGowan junior to do the same. Nonetheless, Shane’s first days in school were not without their difficulties. Disgust, hatred, fear, loathing … (I had) the accent kicked out of me.

Shaken by his surroundings, marked out by his voice and no doubt petrified by what the future held, the six-year-old child could at least turn to his parents and newly born infant sister, Siobhan, for emotional support. And like most Irish families living in the UK, there was no shortage of aunts, uncles and similarly displaced children to draw solace from. Still, it was only on the frequent trips home that Shane and his younger sibling felt truly free. In England, Siobhan later recalled, I was in a constant state of trauma. But when we went back, I let my breath out.

Within a year or so, the MacGowans moved again, this time to Ealing, in West London, where they eventually put down roots. "I never really settled, Maurice MacGowan later confirmed. The English people were great, but the general atmosphere was very puritanical … all the right laws, but the wrong application. The Irish are essentially a lawless people, that’s what makes us a free people in a way … Obviously experiencing difficulties of his own, Shane’s father sought an emotional connection with his homeland via a rapidly expanding collection of LPs, full of traditional Irish Ceilidh (pronounced K-Lee) music. Yet his greatest affection was reserved for The Dubliners, a rambunctious folk group led by Luke Kelly and Ronnie Drew, whose dirty songs of drinking, carousing and the price to be paid the morning after" were stirring up major interest in Ireland at the time.

Drawn to what he heard, Shane was soon sitting alongside his father, humming along to the sounds emanating from the record player. I was mad on The Dubliners as a kid, he said, especially the dirty songs. Whether they were a vital link to the fields he left behind or simply an exciting alternative to the joys of TV or tormenting his sister, the eventual result of Shane’s infatuation with The Dubliners cannot be understated. As the years came to show, their lyricism and musicianship would inform much of his adult life – from the songs he wrote to the habits he pursued.

However, for the time being at least, MacGowan showed little outward sign of rebellion. Instead, he was thoroughly absorbed with matters of spirit. (Though) my parents spent the first ten years of my life lapsing and repenting like bloody yo-yos, I stayed a religious maniac until the age of 11. Such devotion to the Cross was not uncommon in Irish children. Like Italy, Spain and Poland, Eire’s history was symbiotically linked to that of the Church, the nation converting en masse to Catholicism under the guiding hand of St. Patrick in the sixth century. In fact, when Protestantism first swept across Europe in the 1500s, it had little initial impact on Southern Ireland or its people, their faith in Rome too firmly entrenched to be shaken by charges of Papal corruption or abuse of power. As the centuries rolled on, this faith only grew stronger, with thoughts of God and Heaven representing a welcome alternative to the numerous difficulties they faced.

From a formative age then, Irish infants were surrounded by images of Christ, his features dominating weekly church services, the schools they attended and more often than not, the houses in which they grew up. Shane’s upbringing was no different, with religious icons taking pride of place in various rooms of his Tipperary home. While his parents may have harboured the occasional doubts regarding the strength of their own religious convictions, the young MacGowan remained ever faithful to the Holy Spirit. According to him, it was all the fault of his aunt, Nora. She used to indoctrinate me with loads of Catholic magazines and make me do the Rosary.

The bubble surrounding Shane’s innocent notions of Christianity came to an abrupt end while on holiday in Ireland in 1968. I remember the day I lapsed like it was yesterday, he later recalled to Time Out. I was walking up a country lane and it just hit me. ‘Hang on,’ I thought. ‘Just supposing it isn’t true? Suppose there’s no heaven or hell? Suppose there’s nothing after death?’ I just couldn’t get that out of my head … Suffice it to say, any stray thoughts of becoming a priest ended soon after this moment of clarity. However, MacGowan claims that his faith (or a modified version of it), still guides his conscience as an adult. As the saying goes, ‘Once a Catholic, always a Catholic …’

Beyond his immediate spiritual distress, Shane was discovering another religion of sorts. My aunt used to smoke, drink and gamble, he later confirmed. Those were the vices she passed on to me. We used to do the horses, and she’d give me cigarettes and port. Her belief was that if you allow kids to drink what you’re drinking in the house, then you don’t shroud alcohol in mystique – you stop them becoming alcoholics. Whatever the truth of his aunt’s philosophy, the young MacGowan rapidly developed a taste for alcohol, enjoying the combined sense of relaxation and relative abandon it brought. While his parents surely kept all spirits under lock and key, regular visits to his uncle’s pub in Dagenham ensured Shane could sneak a quick taste of beer or whiskey when the occasion demanded it. As with so many of his childhood experiences, MacGowan would forge an enduring alliance with alcohol in years to come, its importance to his life perhaps only superseded by a love of music and literature.

It was precisely that love of literature that enabled him to find a way forward in the English educational system. A voracious reader since infancy, Shane quickly dispensed with the likes of Learn The Alphabet With Janet And John and Peter And Jane Go To The Zoo in favour of his father’s book collection. By the age of eight, he was already engrossed in the works of Ian Fleming (the creator of superspy James Bond), and soon after could be found tackling novels by the likes of Joseph Heller and Graham Greene. The Irish poetry of William Butler Yeats and James Donleavy was also diligently poured over. Legend even has it that MacGowan successfully worked his way through James Joyce’s magnum opus, Ulysses. Now that took me a while, he later laughed. The discovery of his ultimate literary hero, the hard-drinking Dubliner Brendan Behan only added to Shane’s growing interest in the joys of the written word.

Unsurprisingly, this appetite for books soon translated itself into an enviable command of the English language, a fact MacGowan’s teachers duly noticed and capitalised on. Sensing a potential prodigy in their midst, Shane was actively encouraged in his essay writing, and (much to his joy) given additional texts to read. Among his accomplishments was a critical analysis of the romantic poet/visionary William Blake that truly propelled him into the literary firmament. He followed this up by composing his own poetry at a tender age. Paying a small bursary to gain entrance to Westminster School, a prestigious fee-paying institution with a superb academic record and teachers to match, 12-year-old Shane MacGowan joined the ranks of the privileged few. He celebrated his good fortune by stealing sufficient money to buy a Jimi Hendrix album.

By this time, Shane’s musical tastes had extended well beyond those of his parents with Sixties psychedelic icon Hendrix becoming a firm favourite. "Axis: Bold As Love really changed my life, Shane later said of Jimi’s 1967 LP. I nicked it, I think. Or I stole the money to buy it. Records cost two pounds when I was a boy, so I usually bought singles. I got as many as I could for Christmas and birthdays and stuff. Entranced by Hendrix’s soulful combination of blues, funk and hard rock stylings, it was only a matter of time before the young MacGowan was connecting the dots to other icons of the era. Creedence Clearwater Revival, Led Zeppelin, Cream, MC5 right up to The Stooges … thousands of ‘em. They were raw, real … sincere."

Shane’s youthful tastes didn’t end with straight-ahead rock. There were other, more eclectic avenues to explore including flirtations with Bebop, jump blues and early reggae. However, he saved the lion’s share of his praise for two wildly different, yet strangely similar, performers: Bo Diddley and Lou Reed. Bo Diddley was my favourite black rock’n’roller, MacGowan later told Melody Maker. You never knew what he was going to do … hard rock, lots of guitar solos (or) straight-up blues. What I really liked were the classic records he made in the Fifties and Sixties. Wild stuff. Pure rhythm. Lou Reed invoked a similar response. A really big influence, but I couldn’t pin it down to one record. Anything off the first Velvet Underground album, I suppose. Though he didn’t know it at the time, Shane’s first band would bear stark witness to his adolescent obsessions with Diddley and Reed, albeit with an extremely punk rock twist in the tail.

Yet back in the early Seventies, he was still amassing new influences. Records by Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Sly & The Family Stone and Irish group Thin Lizzy were all bought, listened to and duly dissected. Van Morrison and Lizzy were both really big influences on me. Especially Phil Lynott’s writing … great songs, great melodies, great lyrics. It was perhaps fitting that MacGowan made a clear emotional connection with Phil Lynott’s sinewy, but always romantic, brand of Celtic rock. A black kid raised in a decidedly white (and extremely tough) area of Dublin, Lynott formed Thin Lizzy while still a teenager in 1969, gaining early success with a spirited rendition of the Irish traditional standard ‘Whiskey In The Jar’.

By fusing the bump and grind of acts such as Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin to the subtle complexities of Celtic folk, he propelled Thin Lizzy to stardom – the first act since Van Morrison and Rory Gallagher to really escape the confines of Ireland’s music scene and ply their trade on an international stage. Additionally, with songs such as ‘Vagabond Of The Western World’, ‘Emerald’ and, in later years, ‘Black Rose’, Lynott cast a sharp eye on the history of Eire, drawing lyrical inspiration from tales of high kings, doomed young warriors, the famine years and political insurrection. As with